


Just In Case, Say I Love You

by Morpheus626



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25061197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morpheus626/pseuds/Morpheus626
Summary: Can Morse Code be romantic? Why not, say I.
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge
Kudos: 6





	Just In Case, Say I Love You

He learns it because saying it out loud seems too…risky. Too much put to chance, of presuming the rest of the guys would leave them alone. 

So he learns, and after the first few times, he knows that Eugene has learned as well, when he starts returning the message. The short taps mixed with a few longer ones, where his finger would linger just briefly on Eugene’s skin to dictate the dashes versus the dots. 

It isn’t necessarily how he envisioned using code of any kind, let alone Morse in the war, but it becomes more important than anything else. 

Once in the mornings, if they get a chance. Quickly, before too many of the others are awake, Eugene’s hand warm in his as he taps it out with his thumb:

.. / .-.. — …- . / -.– — ..-

It’s harder to get a chance to do it before a fight-sometimes, the bullets fly and the mortars need firing before he can manage it. Some of those times, Eugene does instead, his hands mostly holding down the mortar plate in the mud, a thumb moved just enough to reach him and tap it quickly, to make it seem like an adjustment as he tries to help steady the plate and mortar. That’s when it matters most, when the thought of either of them getting hurt makes him feel sick to his stomach. He knows Eugene’s feelings by the taps, but can’t bear the thought of Eugene dying,and somehow possibly not getting to tap it out to him again.

.. / .-.. — …- . / -.– — ..-

At night, it’s easier. They can exchange it then, tap it out multiple times back and forth. The nights it burns, to not be able to be closer, to say it, to do so many other things, he taps it as many times as he can, each repeat of it from Eugene something he relishes, along with the soft smile on Eugene’s face. At the end, it’s rarely seen, but he understands it. He half wonders if he’ll remember how to smile himself if they ever make it home. But that pattern helps him get to something like one, as he watches Eugene’s finger tap against his arm: 

.. / .-.. — …- . / -.– — ..-

By the time they get to go home, it’s like the beating of his heart, as familiar a rhythm as any other. But it stops his heart for a moment, when Eugene taps it on his hand, half asleep in the seat beside him, as the train stops at the station in New Orleans. He thinks for a moment, just one, of standing up and walking out of the almost completely empty train car to what used to be home. 

Instead, he stays sitting, lets himself lean against Eugene, to sleep beside him until they near the stop in Alabama, where they’ll depart the train together, to head to Eugene’s home. Before he sleeps, he taps it out against Eugene’s hand in response. 

Eugene’s eyes only barely open, and he doesn’t blame him one bit. Even leaned against one another and the walls of the car, it’s the best sleep any of them have gotten since being shipped out. Then a smile, that beautiful smile, breaks out and even better: 

“Love you, Merriell.” 

No more tapping, just Eugene’s hand in his and the phrase, whispered back and forth as they fall in and out of sleep: 

“I love you” 

“I love you” 

“I love you” 


End file.
